Manufacturing and dispensing of prescription medications is tightly controlled in some parts of the world, and not so tightly in other parts. But even where medications are tightly controlled, formulations may contain supposedly inert ingredients or trace amounts of contamination, that are either unknown to the manufacturer, or that the manufacturer is not required to report, or fails to report for any reason. These supposedly inert substances or trace elements may make a difference in compatibility or suitability for some sensitive individuals, for example, persons with particular allergies or metabolic anomalies. In addition, potency and other factors may vary from batch to batch, and with age depending on storage conditions and place of manufacture. It is also possible for counterfeit medications to enter the stream of commerce, and go undetected. Even medications bearing identical labels may have differences, and generic substitutes may differ from patented brands in ways that are important to particular patients. Accordingly, medications delivered to the patient may vary in important ways, even if labeled identically or similarly. Currently, however, such variations in formulation or current state are extremely expensive to discover using laboratory analysis, if discoverable at all. In addition, unlabeled medications may sometimes require identification, and there is often no reliable, economically feasible way to discover an identity of an unlabeled medication. Thus, pharmacists, doctors, and patients must rely on blind faith and trial and error, when it comes to differences between medication batches, and must either discard unlabeled medications or risk adverse effects.
It would be desirable, therefore, to develop new technologies for such applications, that overcomes these and other limitations of the prior art, and enables pharmacists, doctors and patients to discover more information about medications being consumed.